TVLine.com’s Michael Slezak and American Idol Season 6 standout Melinda Doolittle have returned for an all-new episode of Idology, discussing the female edition of Hollywood Week for American Idol Season 12. Check out the episode below via TVLine:

This is probably my favorite episode of their season so far. Slezak is right on the money about some of the more baffling cuts of Hollywood Week, and I don’t say that simply because I’ve been on the man’s show before. The man knows what he’s talking about. Melinda Doolittle does as well, of course, and I couldn’t help nodding along in agreement as she took the girls to task for writing the lyrics on their arm.

It harks back to The X Factor Australia, where Guy Sebastian (one of the best judges on any singing competition, and a man for all seasons) had absolutely no patience for contestants forgetting their words, rationalizing that it’s not even like they’re learning an entire song. “It’s a minute and a half/two minutes, tops,” he’d say. “It’s not hard.” And I could never do anything else but agree. Don’t get me wrong. The guys had their own “word salad” issues, and the fact that Johnny Keyser has made it as far as he has after making a habit of bumbling his way through half his songs is a small miracle unto itself. But women are held to a much higher standard on this show.

Phillip Phillips, bless his heart, could have done “Time of the Season” every single week and still have sailed to the title over any number of the considerably talented women in the cast last year. This “First female winner in five years” thing is never going to happen if they keep hyping these contestants as the second coming, and then spend two full hours burying those excellent performances in a miasma of forgotten lyrics and personal squabbles. It’s hardly an original opinion since people have been saying for years, but it’s never been truer in five years than it is now: If a female can’t win this season, then we can pretty much close up shop on the idea of it ever happening again.

What do you think? Is it really all that hard to learn song lyrics? And could the overhyping of the women backfire? And what do you make of Zoanette Johnson?